


Wire in a Fire

by floralc



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26944960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floralc/pseuds/floralc
Summary: In 2027, Minerva McGonagall is laid to rest amidst the beginnings of new political turmoil in the Wizarding World. Rumors swirl about the controversial policies of new Minister of Magic, Seamus Finnegan, but there is little proof. Eglantine Bertrand and her daughters hope to oppose him and his increasing authoritarianism, but they're going to need support--and a plan. When Seamus announces a plan to control the abilities of many witches and wizards, including Eglantine and her family, they begin recruiting from all kinds of unlikely places.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Happy [ha] Quarantine, all. I actually wrote this story years ago, including its lengthy preceding stories, but given the current political climate in the good old USA, I thought starting at the end might be especially timely. I am supposed to say that Seamus Finnegan isn't based on anybody, and I guess he isn't based on any one person--not completely. 
> 
> To catch you up on Eglantine: She was in the same class as the Marauders and Lily, and was friends with Lily (before it was cool) and Snape (before he was a creep) and Sirius (before they grew up). Her aunt and uncle, who are also neighbors, were Death Eaters, but their daughter Melusina kept it mostly on the straight-and-narrow and is now a bigwig in the Department of Mysteries. Eglantine was always a bit of a mess, and spent her twenties as a manager for musicians and bands, like Celestina Warbeck (she got fired), various magical hair bands that disbanded due to sex, drugs, and contract disputes, and the Weird Sisters, who only got famous thanks to Eglantine and a lot of leather pants. She also had an on-again-off-again relationship with Sirius, and after his escape from prison, they found one another again and she managed to get pregnant with her daughters before he died. ("Died," as Eglantine's daughter Aludra will tell you, is a complicated word.) She waited a long time to tell her daughters who their father was, preferring to just tell them that he was American. When she finally does tell them, Aludra--Allie--stops speaking to her. 
> 
> And there we begin. I hope you like Eglantine--I always have a lot of fun writing her.

The funeral was a quiet affair, held just after midday in a lonely corner of the cemetery on the outskirts of Hogsmeade village. A cluster of black umbrellas gathered beneath a drooping yew tree that had a deep black gash running through it, carved years ago by an errant bolt of lightning. The new Headmaster, Neville Longbottom, was giving a speech that was equal parts droning and stammering.

_I’m next_ , thought Eglantine. _If this speech doesn’t kill me, it’s only a matter of time._

She had turned sixty-seven earlier that month, and while she was looking forward to the dirty jokes she could make in two years, the fact remained that she was old. She didn’t know why it had only set in just now, and not before: when she was forty, fifty, and sixty she had been indifferent to her age, even amused by it; now, as seventy drew near, something had changed. There had been many long nights lately spent by the fireside, mulling over old memories; and she had a tally of numbers that floated perpetually about her head like gnats. Ages her friends had died, her parents, her sister; how many years it had been since each of them had gone; how many years since she had last felt properly happy.

Happiness faded over time. She’d always known that. She had not, however, expected to reach sixty-seven without feeling as though she’d ever known it for more than a moment.

She glanced up at the other attendees. Some of the young professors—appalling that she didn’t even know their names—were stifling yawns; the older ones, who had known Minerva McGonagall more intimately, looked impatient. Not only was Neville’s speech as dull as the nails holding the coffin together, it had little to do with the person she’d been.

Lily’s son Harry was not there. She wasn’t surprised: he hadn’t been seen in public since his daughter Lily’s graduation from Hogwarts in May, and he’d been keeping a low profile since his eldest son, Albus, had been killed abroad during the course of his work as an ambassador in the International Conference of Wizards. It had been major news, inasmuch as there was news anymore—such major news that even she, who preferred pretending that the world didn’t exist, had heard of it. She’d never worked up the nerve to talk to him about his parents or about Sirius Black, but she thought of him, nevertheless, as the most distant sort of nephew.

The former Minister was there, a serious-looking woman named Hermione who Eglantine understood was both Harry’s close friend and a relative by marriage. She looked well, Eglantine thought, despite the disgrace that had surrounded her on her way out of office—not that she had done anything truly despicable, but she’d attracted the fickle disgrace of public opinion, which was almost worse. Her husband Ron stood by her side, his face drawn; his eyes were darting all around, taking in the dreary weather, the disrepair of the school on the hill and of the village, the empty foundations where the Shrieking Shack had stood before a “Village Beautification Initiative” had led to its demolishment (that was before a lack of finances had in turn demolished the initiative). His eyes met Eglantine’s for a moment, and she could sense that he was as intensely bored as she was, no shock there, and that he wished his wife would have taken over Hogwarts rather than Neville.

At last, the speech was over. The clods of dirt were thrown, final murmurings were said over the grave, and the crowd began to disperse.

“What a speech,” said Eglantine’s daughter, Adhara. “I thought it’d never end.”

“I think if the speaker had had his way, it wouldn’t—“

“Ms.—er—Professor—Eg—er,” said a voice behind her, a voice with which she’d grown overly familiar during the last half-hour.

“You did an _excellent_ job with the eulogy, Professor Longbottom,” said Eglantine. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“You don’t think it went on too long?”

“What is ‘too long,’ when talking about the accomplishments of a woman like Minerva?”

“Indeed.” Neville shuffled back and forth. Power and responsibility seemed to have thrust him back to his old lack of self-confidence; Eglantine could tell that it had more than a little to do with his divorce, too. “I say, Ms. Bertrand, you wouldn’t consider coming back to Hogwarts, would you? I know, I know, I’ve asked before, but we’ve lost Simon Milligan to a job with the Ministry—he fancied a change, you know—and we could really use an experienced Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. I’ve been teaching the class myself, as it’s been beastly trying to find someone.”

“People my age don’t usually decide to return to work.”

“Well, no. But what is age, anyway? I’ve just turned forty-seven, and I feel the same as I did twenty years ago.” Neville bit his lip. “Goodness. Twenty years ago, I was _twenty-seven_. I feel as though twenty years ago, I was seventeen…hm. Anyway! It wouldn’t need to be a years-long commitment, if you get bored of it.” _Or if I drop dead,_ Eglantine thought. “Give it a thought, hm?”

“I will, of course I will.”

“Just, er—think a bit quickly, hm? After the first of the year, the power to hire and fire will be going to the Minister for Magic. Afternoon, Ms. Bertrand.”

Neville drifted away to Hermione and Ron before he could say anything further to Eglantine. She turned to Adhara. “Is this true, Addie?”

“Yes, Mum. If you hadn’t cancelled your _Prophet_ subscription, you’d know.”

“Well, it’s all garbage these days, isn’t it? Not that it wasn’t _always_ garbage, but there used to be some truth thrown in amongst all the journalists’ word-vomit. Now it’s all letters. All day, every day, letters. That’s not news! That’s just a collection of the ramblings of a bunch of barmy old coots with nothing better to do than to sit about all day scribbling down every mad thought that whizzes into their otherwise empty little heads.”

“The _Prophet_ is a business. Apparently, people want to read letters.”

“People want to read bullshit.”

“Mum, we’re at a _funeral.”_

“We’re at the funeral of someone who would most certainly have agreed with me.” She shook her head. “The power of hiring and firing with the Ministry? Oh, yes, because _that’s_ been a bloody fantastic idea every time they’ve done it before.”

Addie opened the gate to the cemetery and opened the car door for her mother, sitting down on the passenger side and beginning to reapply her eyeliner. “Mum,” she said once Eglantine had shut the door, “how much _do_ you know about what Finnegan’s been up to?”

“What do you mean, what he’s been up to? Can’t be much, can it? He’s only just taken office.” Eglantine sped off, drawing interested looks from the villagers.

“Honestly, Mum. What do you _do_ all day?”

“I write music. I play my instruments. I read. I garden. I go to sleep and do it all over again. That’s what old people do, Addie. You’ll know all about it one day. You don’t think you will, but there’ll come a day when you’re eating beans on toast at half-past four and thinking, _Might as well go to bed in a bit, since I’ve done everything I wanted to do today._ ”

“You don’t _ever_ read the news?”

“No. What do I care for the news?”

Addie shook her head. “Mum, go back into the village. We’ll have tea. And I’m buying you a newspaper.”

Addie bought three newspapers: the _Prophet_ ; the _Quibbler_ , which used to be a tabloid and was now a respected magazine with interviews and opinion pieces; and a new one, the _Walpurgian_ , which stood on its own little wooden shelf and cost twice as much as either of the others. She took her mother to the old Madam Puddifoot’s, which had been rebranded as P.D. Thé and which now sold artisanal teas on organic wood tables (cruelty-free: trees guaranteed not to have been sentient), bought her a chamomile-vanilla tea, and demanded that she sit and read.

“This is like a really boring sort of kidnapping,” Eglantine declared, wincing as she took a sip of her tea. “What _is_ this? This isn’t tea. This is dishwater with flavoring.”

“It’s tea, Mum. Just read.”

It took Eglantine all of five minutes before she threw the _Prophet_ onto the ground in frustration. “This is the worst bloody garbage I’ve ever seen! Not only the letters complete claptrap, the _paper_ is ridiculous! The _Prophet_ used to be a shill for Cornelius Fudge back in my day, but nothing compared to this. You’d almost think that Finnegan sat down every night and typed up the paper himself, but for the fact that it’s composed of complete sentences! Who on earth could possibly be in favor of withdrawing from the International Wizarding Conference? Of disbanding the Wizengamot? The man’s an utter dingbat!” Addie only nodded.

She moved on to the _Quibbler_ , which had a lengthy interview with Finnegan himself, shortly before he was elected. In it, he stated that he wanted to abolish all wizarding taxes (which paid for Hogwarts and a number of magical welfare systems that had been recently enacted by Hermione Granger) and instead offer Hogwarts, “that bastion of fiscal mismanagement,” for sale to the highest bidder. “A smart businessperson could make that school far more successful than it is,” he said. He wanted to withdraw from the IWC and disband the Wizengamot to “simplify life in Britain,” and to avoid being “bogged down by the mistakes of other governments.” That would also mean that the people fleeing the dangerous situations abroad in eastern Russia and Colombia, who at the moment had abysmal wizarding governments, would be barred from becoming part of England’s community.

“We must protect our own interests: those of England.”

On the other side of an enormous, glossy photograph of Seamus Finnegan’s freckled, underwhelming visage was a photograph of a much more familiar face: that of Harry Potter, looking solemn beside his wife, Ginevra, who was the sister of the former Minister’s husband.

“ _Harry Potter provides endorsement of Seamus Finnegan_ ,” read a subtitle. The article went on to describe Harry and Ginevra—Ginny—as “irate in their grief,” because the supposedly meddling policies of former governments had led to his son’s death. “ ‘Al would still be alive today if we had kept out of others’ business and fought our own fights at home.’” The article referred to Harry and Seamus no fewer than seven times as “former school chums.”

Eglantine folded the paper, and Addie could hear some of what was churning around in her mother’s mind; Eglantine had never bothered hiding her thoughts from her. _Lily’s grandson. Of course he_ might _be alive, but at what cost? Could never have said that to Lily, but that’s moot, isn’t it? What would she have said? Would never have turned out this way if that bastard Peter hadn’t— Looks just like James—James would’ve called him cowardly, most like. “Any grandson of mine would be proud to die so honorably,” or some sort of garbage—I could just see him becoming_ that _sort of man in his old age—_

“What’s this _Walpurgian_?” Eglantine said, putting the other papers on the chair next to her.

“It’s a new paper, run by a man called Percy Weasley.”

“That’d be a relative of both the brother of both the former Minister’s husband Ronald and Harry Potter’s wife? Nepotism at its finest, eh?” She looked at its matte cover, understatedly elegant in its design. “Nice-looking publication. Of course, that means it’s probably got as much substance as this tea.” _Although he must be in a tight spot, Percy Weasley, trapped between Seamus Finnegan’s fan club and his brother. (Don’t be so kind to the man—it obviously isn’t_ that _tight—he’s made it clear which side he’s on.)_

She began flipping through, her hand running through her hair, starting at the table of contents. Addie didn’t need to hear her mother’s thoughts to know that she was becoming more and more irritated, and she wasn’t surprised; the _Walpurgian_ was pure pro-Finnegan propaganda, full of graphs and emotional photographs meant to bolster support for Finnegan’s policies, and strike doubt into the minds of his opponents.

Eglantine reached the end of the magazine, closed its covers, and folded her hands neatly on top, opening her mouth as if to speak. She looked down at her hands. Then, she grabbed the magazine and threw it like a Frisbee into the crackling fireplace.

“No burning paper!” scolded the bored young man behind the counter.

“It’s not paper, it’s a pile of shite. Any rule against burning shite? No? Good. I’d burn it twice if I could.” She turned to Addie. “Do people actually _believe_ this sort of thing? That Metamorphmagi are turning into—into _pepper pots_ and murdering people in their beds? That creepy foreigners and pro-creature-rights people— _Bestialists_ , they call them, can you imagine?—are watching them from their bloody kettles? Has the world gone mad?”

Addie shrugged. “It’d seem so. I’ve done my research on Finnegan—it seems that he used to be fairly normal. It’s no surprise that he was able to reach out to his old friend Harry and get him emotional about the death of his son; that’s understandable. Using it for his campaign, that’s only practical. I think that Harry Potter’s endorsement meant a lot for him, as far as getting into office.”

“Of course it did, the slimy social-climbing toad! Who is he? Some plain little lad from County Wicklow? The only exceptional thing about him is that he’s swindled England into thinking more of him.”

Addie cleared her throat. It was time. “Do you remember me talking about Teddy Lupin, from school?”

“Of course I do. I taught his mother.” _And shagged his father_ , Addie saw her think. _I always thought that was excessively awkward_. _My God. He could be my sodding_ grandson _, I really am on my deathbed._ “Why?”

“He’s a Metamporphmagus, like his mum. He had to register. He’s been canned from his job with the Aurors—working for Potter, of course—and has to check in with the Ministry every week. He’s got a tracker on him that broadcasts everywhere he goes. It’s horrific.”

“Even worse than anything his father ever had to deal with, and he was a werewolf,” said Eglantine, pursing her lips. Even Remus, mild-mannered and logical as he’d been, would’ve stormed the Ministry himself if he’d known. Eglantine rather wanted to, herself, at the thought of the child of her dear friend Remus and her favorite student Tonks being essentially a prisoner.

“I’ve heard they’ve got it even worse. Werewolves have got to live in a village called Dotterly Hedge, and they’re locked up in cells the whole week of the full moon. They’re basically prisoners, even though Finnegan calls it a form of therapy, where they’re trying to sort of regulate the wolf out of them.”

“And Harry Potter’s for all this, I suppose?”

“He’s been silent on the werewolf-Metamorphmagi front. Just keeps banging on about his dead son. Sorry if that sounds insensitive, but I’m past caring. Using a dead relative to get anybody elected is just deplorable and pathetic.”

“And yet it happens all the time.” Eglantine drained her tea. “Well, it seems I might finally have to have a talk with young Harry. You know, I remember him as an infant. Cute little lad, always pelting his dad with carrots. I never realized he’d grow up to be such a little weasel.” _Weaselly, traitorous little—_ “Have you spoken to your sister recently, Addie?”

“The word ‘weasel’ makes you think of Allie?”

“Shouldn’t it?”

_Shouldn’t it? She’s definitely earned the title._ “She’s not _inherently_ weaselly, she’s just going through a…a phase.”

“A phase that’s lasted since the 18th of June, eleven years ago.” Eglantine rested her chin on her hand, looking out the window. “I should’ve known how she’d react. I should’ve thought about it more—which is mad to think, because it was all I could imagine for eighteen years. I thought about the moment, about how it would feel to _me_ to tell you, when I should’ve been thinking about your sister.”

“Not about me?”

Eglantine waved her hand. “Oh, come off it. You and I always knew one another. You can hear my thoughts, for heaven’s sake—all my thoughts I don’t hide, and those are fewer than perhaps they should be— and I could always hear yours because you’re mine…but Aludra was different, as we know. And I regret to say that I probably didn’t try as hard as I should have. I took it for granted that she wasn’t like us, wasn’t part of our club. I _liked_ that about her, liked that she was utterly different from me, that I had to get to know her the old-fashioned way. I suppose she didn’t want me to, after all.”

“She tried to contact him.” Addie had always kept this from her mother, buried it deep within herself. It was one of three secrets she’d ever kept. “After you told us, later that night, she—she tried. Harder than I’ve ever seen her try to do anything, following all the rules she’d learnt, she— _searched_ for him, wherever she searches for people. It took her hours, and it didn’t work; she made me do it with her, thinking that since I was her twin it would be like two of her reaching out. It still didn’t work.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to be contacted.”

“You knew him. Would he not have wanted to talk to his own children?” Addie snapped. “Sorry. I just—for that reason, I assumed that, if she couldn’t do it, either she wasn’t good enough or he couldn’t be contacted for some reason. It really threw her, I think. There aren’t a lot of reasons why a spirit can’t be reached, if someone’s powers are strong enough—or so Allie said.”

“And what are those reasons?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Allie.”

“Oh, there’s an excellent chance of that. I’d rather ask a bloody dragon.”


	2. Chapter 2

Aludra Bertrand sat in the dark, echoing chamber, a single candle burning between her and the tall, gaping arch draped with shrouds. She could hear water dripping behind the stones, the feeble ghosts of fallen Roundheads, Cavaliers, Yorkists, Lancastrians, Saxons, Romans, Druids. She could hear distant campfire songs, smell long-extinct flowers, taste the rot of ancient food. She inhaled, exhaled, and ceased to feel her body.

Layered behind, above, and below one, just outside one’s field of vision, just beyond the imagination, lives the past. Time is not linear, but loops up, back, and around itself like a knitted blanket, but each thread isn’t aware of the others. Aludra was. Aludra could always see the past, and she could always see the people in it.

When she was a girl, the ghosts had been like movie ghosts: gray, flat, and almost like a real person, but for being dead. Now she could feel them as spirits, even when she couldn’t see them. She could look back into their memories, allow their emotions and the imprints of what they had seen and tasted and smelled to pass through her, rather than depending on conversation. She could reach into the tangles of past years and sort through them, wrapping them into neat coils and arranging them into a narrative.

She sat in the chamber, following the same steps she always did. She left her body, walked through the crossing paths of time that tangled at her feet, bumping into dead soldiers and housewives, tasting rye bread and hearing church bells. The lavender was blooming; bombs were falling; a wild hunting party was speeding across the fields after a hart.

After all this time, she thought she must know him if she saw him, in amongst this crowd of souls and imprints. For a moment, she doubted—how _would_ she know? Her mother’s old photographs?—and she felt herself losing the clarity of the place. She cleared her mind, all except for one collection of thoughts: everything she knew about her father.

She could almost make him out—at least, she thought it was him. There was dark hair, the sound of a motorbike—

“Aludra? What on earth are you doing in here?”

She came back into herself with a lurch so intense that she had to suppress nausea. Her ears rang, and she wanted to turn around and punch whoever her interrupter was square in the nose.

“Oh. It’s you, Mel.” Melusina was her mother’s cousin, the new Head of the Department of Mysteries. She looked about as mysterious as a tabloid newspaper, however, with deep black hair and a look of perpetual iciness that elegantly counteracted her pinup-girl body, which she preferred to neutralize with modest, almost vicar-like robes. “I was just—you know—“

“Holding an impromptu séance in one of the most secure rooms in my wing?” Mel’s expression didn’t have a drop of indulgence in it. “Aludra, when I hired you as my assistant, I took a chance on you. I’m beginning to think it was a mistake. This is the second time I’ve caught you in classified areas.”

“I’m not a spy, Mel, I’m just—“

“I know you’re not a spy. And stop calling me ‘Mel’ when we’re here; it’s too familiar, and it’ll cause nasty whispers around here that I honestly can’t afford right now. Call me Melusina. People know we’re related, we can’t help that, but you can avoid acting as though I’m your loving Auntie Mel who lets you do whatever you want.”

“I don’t know how anyone would ever think I’m acting like that,” Allie grumbled. “You’re the hardest boss I’ve ever had.”

“Thank you.” Mel smiled. “Come on, Allie, just focus for a bit, yeah? Just until all the squabbling about our redheaded friend blows over.”

“I hardly think it will. Half of England hates him.”

“Well, the other half would like nothing more than to suck on his toes, so it’s a bit of a thorny situation we’re all in. The sane ones amongst us are trying really hard to keep a sensible status quo.”

Aludra looked back at the archway as she allowed Mel to lead her back to her desk. She’d be back; she’d find a way. Someone as practical as Mel wouldn’t understand. Mel’s own parents had been either daffy or evil, and nothing about her suggested to Allie that she ever had been curious about them after they’d died. Mel wasn’t curious about much, apart from how to make more money, how to better do her job, and how to avoid pointless interdepartmental meetings. She wasn’t even interested in other people: she’d never married, never thought about procreating, and didn’t even have a pet.

“Mel—usina, have you heard from my mother lately?”

“That’s a bit of a random question.” Melusina’s head whipped round. “You haven’t—felt anything, have you? Anything…demise-y?”

“No, I just—I was wondering, that’s all. It’s…” _I wonder if she’s worrying about the same things I am. I wonder if people like me—people like her and Addie—are going to be the next ones to be branded freaks._ “I was thinking about how she was getting on.”

“You could always visit her. I do believe you know where she lives.”

“I know, it’s just—it’s awkward.”

“Why, because you started hating her about a decade ago for no apparent reason? Yeah, it might be a bit weird, but if you’re thinking about her, you should talk to her.” Mel nudged her with her elbow, smiling almost companionably. “We are getting on in years, you know, your mum and me. We could explode at any moment.”

“Mm.” Allie nodded, returning to her desk, which was heaped with curling bits of parchment covered in runes. There’d be several hours of boring busywork translating them, which she thought was exactly what she needed. It was mindless nothing-work—she’d always been skilled with runes, because if she hit a wall she could always ask a Viking—and it would allow her time to think.

Most people in England knew about the village that the werewolves had been thrown into, and about the basic new restrictions on Metamorphmagi. Finnegan must have known that they’d approve of those; he’d either primed them to approve, or preyed on existing prejudice. No one outside the Ministry, however, knew that Metamorphmagi were no longer allowed to reproduce, lest they pass on their “deceptive genes” to the next generation. They didn’t know that the werewolves were told that if they ever feasted on so much as a terrier, they’d be “euthanized.” Only the Ministry was privy to that information, and even then, it was classified: news of such actions were only shared with what Finnegan called the “Clandestine Departments.” They were the Department of Mysteries, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (currently Harry Potter), and his inner circle. The rest of England was merrily ignorant, firing off their letters in the _Daily Prophet_ as usual, thinking that the very world was contained within their own opinions. The press had been treated like best friends during Hermione Granger-Weasley’s tenure, but now they were barred from interviews, instead receiving typed statements, and were no longer allowed in the Ministry at all.

These days, no one knew anything, and they certainly didn’t know how Finnegan’s mind worked. Allie did. She’d seen dozens like him in school: afraid of anyone who wasn’t tediously, perfectly average, anyone who wasn’t exactly like he was. She’d been in Ravenclaw, historically an open-minded House, and she’d even encountered a few there: academics who thought she was full of hooey, saying she could “talk to the dead”; philosophers who thought she was violating the spirits’ privacy; professors who thought her gift was a waste of time. The other Houses had been worse. They were either afraid of her, contemptuous of her, or annoyed by the fact that she had one of the rarest gifts in the Wizarding world. _One of_ being the key words. Her Gryffindor sister was a born Legilimens, and she never heard anyone complaining about that. That was even rarer, statistically; she’d looked it up, just so she’d feel a bit less strange.

She hadn’t felt like this much of a square peg in years. Finnegan’s terror of the unconventional had made her look at herself again as an outsider would: eccentric, single woman living in a cottage with a cat, talking to ghosts. She looked at her sister as an outsider would: semi-belligerent, currently-single lesbian with a dog and a successful career as an Agony Aunt on the Wizarding Wireless Network, natural Legilimens. They were both atypical enough to be Finnegan’s targets. And she looked at her mother.

She hadn’t wanted to admit it, but she was inexplicably terrified for Eglantine. It was irrational, she thought half the time; it was fated, she thought the other half. Eglantine was a nearly seventy-year-old woman who had sheltered a fugitive (which Allie had always secretly thought was the most fascinating thing she’d ever done) and had had a unique career within the Wizarding world, managing and creating bands. (It was a common Muggle career but, until Eglantine, few witches and wizards had gone for it, perhaps because wizarding music had historically been horrendous.) She was a trained Legilimens, she had always been outspoken, and her friends had included both werewolves and Metamorphmagi. Addie had told her once that their mother had even shagged a werewolf, which Allie wasn’t sure she believed, because Addie had also said that the werewolf in question had been their classmate Teddy’s father. That was just impossible.

_Eglantine_. She felt a tug on her mind, as if she’d forgotten to turn the oven off and had just realized it with a tremor of fear. _Eglantine_.

This had never happened to her before. She glanced around, half-expecting to see some kind of practical joker—or her sister. When her sister had tried to see her thoughts, it had _almost_ felt like this, but weaker: an unsettling question, _Did I forget something_?

_You’re not her_. She didn’t hear the voice so much as sense it, layered behind all the cluttery noise of the departmental office: Mel’s low voice dictating a letter, the crisp leafy sound of memos flitting to and fro, folders sliding themselves on and off shelves as they were called for. It was almost like an illusion. _You looked like her for a minute. I’ve been waiting to see her for some time now. Who are you? Are you one of her cousins?_

It had to be him. Why couldn’t she see him? She could always see them, even if it was just a momentary impression. She’d nearly seen before, and now that he was contacting her, he ought to have been as clear as a television screen.

_I’m her daughter. Your daughter._

 _That’s ridiculous! We never even…oh._ Oh _. I suppose it is possible._

_It’s more than possible, it’s true. She told me herself, when I turned eighteen._

_What’s your name?_

_Aludra. There are two of us—I have a twin, I mean. Her name is Adhara._

_Aludra and…_ She heard a soft laugh, like a dog barking in the neighbor’s yard. _Two stars in Canis Major, if my memory serves._

_The Great Dog. Mum said you could turn into a dog—_

_And my family named their children after stars. She couldn’t have chosen better. And what are you two like? Best friends, I hope? Did you get up to a lot of mischief in school?_

_Well, not really. There’s not a lot of mischief people want to get up to with someone who talks to ghosts. Addie did alright. For her, reading people’s thoughts was like a party trick—although heaven forbid you call it_ reading _people’s thoughts. Apparently that’s off-base._

 _Oh._ There was a pause. _Those would be your mother’s gifts, I’d expect. All I ever did was cause trouble. And, you know, the dog thing. How’s your mother?_

_I don’t know._

_What do you mean, you don’t know?_

_I haven’t spoken to her in eleven years. Since she told me about you._

_What do you_ mean _? No one thinks I’m a murderer anymore, Harry took care of that, so why should you…had she not told you before? Why wouldn’t she…I don’t know, this is all wrong._

The voice began to fade, as if growing further away. _She’d never have kept something like that to herself, not even her, old habits die hard, she never_ did _love you back, you know. How do you know they’re yours, of course they’re mine, don’t be a twit, Sirius—maybe she knows how to get back…_

The voice was gone, and Mel was standing over her, fanning her with a stack of rune papers. “You gave me a bit of a turn,” she said. “You just passed out, right there onto the parchment. I think you need a bit of fresh air—why don’t you take a long lunch and have a walk round the block, yeah? I haven’t got any meetings until two.”

She felt a strange gnawing in her stomach, not hunger or gas but the same sharp nagging pain one feels when waking up too early, anxious about a presentation or an interview. He had said, “Maybe she knows how to get back.” She was right, then, in her assumption that the veil behind which he had fallen was not the true underworld, or afterlife, or whatever one wanted to call it, nor was it one of the temporal planes that over- or under-laid this one. It was almost…prison-like.

She closed her eyes, both to fight the bile rising in her throat to burn her tonsils, and to remember. In amongst the memories buried in the land that encased the Ministry, there had been a cold, vast expanse of nothingness, shrunken and contained within every layer around it like the pit of a cherry.

“Before I do, Melusina…that room I was in. What’s it used for? It’s set up like a courtroom, but instead of a judge, there’s—“

“Everyone always asks that, when they see it.”

“But what’s it _for_?” Allie wiped sweat from her brow; she hadn’t even known she was hot. “It felt strange, almost like…” She didn’t want to guess wrong. _Am I wrong? Do I feel that I_ could _be wrong?_ “It feels like a prison.”

“It could be seen in that light, yes.”

“It felt…different. You don’t know what it’s normally like, but normally the—the dead are all around, like the air or the weather. There was something off about that room.”

“There would be, I suppose.”

“Does Finnegan—“

“Do _not_ mention that name in this office, Aludra. He hears us every time we say his name.”

Allie snorted. “ _You_ said his name earlier. Anyway, what is he, Vol—“

“Where do you think he got the idea?”

“All right, so the old creeper is listening to our conversations. I’ll make a change. Does Shaming-Us Fart-Again sentence people to walk through that archway?”

Mel shook her head. “You really are your mother’s daughter, you know that? Fart-Again, I ask you…” She met Allie’s eyes, just for a moment. “Yes.”

Allie thought about the smallness of the place, the remoteness, the unnaturalness of the separation. “Mel, that’s inhumane—“

“That’s also top-secret. You say a word to anyone, you and I will have to walk through that archway, are we clear? I’m only telling you because—well, because your father went through there, and you’ve a right to know what’s on the other side. You’re familiar with Dementors, Aludra? Well, some enterprising individual found out what makes them tick, where the souls go when they suck them in. He found a way to make a place that acts as a Dementor does: it’s something of a black hole for human souls, where they get sucked in and can’t get back out again. You have to walk through the veil, and once you do, nothing of you ever comes out the other side. Not here, anyway.”

“Isn’t it crowded?”

“You’d know that better than I would, wouldn’t you?”

Her mother hadn’t learned of Sirius’s death until the next day, Allie remembered her saying. He fell through a veil, which meant that he’d died. It wasn’t like her mother not to question _why_ falling through a simple veiled arch had killed a man.

“Does Mum know? I mean, does she know everything?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so. There aren’t many people in the world who could’ve told her, and I know that I never did.”

“But you’ve just told me.”

“You talked to them, didn’t you?” Mel rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “You talked to them—I could hear their whispers, even across the room. At least, you _tried_. It’s a bit unnerving that even you can’t reach them. Then again, I’d hate to think what you’d hear if you could.” When she removed her hands, Allie saw that her eyes were full of tears. “A year ago, a man named Bode brought me into that room. He was retiring, and I’d been chosen by the unanimous vote of the Minister and all the other Heads of departments to lead the Department of Mysteries. This is despite my mother and father being Death Eaters, and my sister being—well, you’ve met her—so this was quite a political coup, in a sense. Anyway, Bode took me into that room. There was a trial going on there, of a man caught performing improper spells on—on children. I tell you, Allie, no one ever hears about these criminals. It’s like the entire Wizarding community gets a Memory Charm put on them, and maybe they do. But they had this man, this horrible, evil man, standing before them in a robe. Not our robes—like a bathrobe, almost, not something a person would typically wear to an event around other people. And this wasn’t your usual trial. It was presided over by Granger herself, the month before she was voted out. Bode whispered to me that she’d never sentenced anybody to the Veil, but that this one was bound to get it.

“Bode, and all the other Heads, and the Minister voted. Just as they’d voted to appoint me, they voted to condemn this man. They explained to him what the sentence meant, and he complained and tried to apologize, of course. I could tell the Minister was made very uncomfortable, but she called out the sentence anyway. The man was made to stand in front of the veil, and the Minister and two other Heads—Bode and Percy Weasley—blasted the man through the veil. The spell they use is part of the sentence: some Ministers have favored Stunning spells, while some have favored Cruciatus. Then, the man was gone. Everybody packed up their things and walked out. Bode said to me, ‘Now you know the last Mystery.’ The others—there are seven—he showed me over the years, since I was his second-in-command.”

“Why is it such a secret? The country can know about Dementors, they can know about everything else—“

“I don’t know, Allie. Perhaps it’s worse than even I know. But I thought, since you can _speak_ to the people, you might as well know why they’re there and what sort of place it is.”

“I’m glad I didn’t speak to him. What was his name?”

“You know…” Mel frowned. “I’ve forgotten. Isn’t that strange?” 


	3. Chapter 3

Eglantine sat in the main hall of the castle, her purse in her lap. She’d been waiting nearly an hour, and the wait still didn’t feel as long as the speeches had. She could hear the frolicking of students echoing amongst the stones, and she realized how long ago her own time there had been. Insane—and she’d thought it’d felt long ago when she’d returned to teach in the nineteen-eighties.

The Headmaster came up the steps, wiping his mouth absentmindedly with the sleeve of his robe—he’d been eating a cinnamon roll—and taking a small glass globe out of his pocket, which lit up red. He frowned at it, then he saw Eglantine: he leapt up into the air and dropped the globe. Eglantine caught it before it shattered, holding it there and guiding it back into Neville’s hand.

“Ah,” he said feebly. “Nonverbal. Never did quite master the hang of those, unless you count certain—er—pesticidal spells, and of course Patronuses…did you forget something in the cemetery, Ms. Bertrand?”

_You cannot possibly be this much of a drip. It’s physically impossible for a human being to have made it to your age with this level of aw-shucks running through his veins._

“No, Headmaster. I would like to accept your job offer.”

“You—ah—you would? Well, I mean, that’s splendid, but I _did_ mention it to the former Minister…”

“You’d have to be mad to hire her. She’s a lovely woman and the picture of competence, I’m sure, but don’t you know that you’d have Finnegan breathing down your neck in a moment? You’d probably be forced to hire some dim Ministry intern who’s just finished learning how to wipe his arse without looking.”

Neville gave a little cough. “Er—Ms. Bertrand, with all due respect, you’re hardly less likely to attract the Minister’s scrutiny. There are few people, short of his own friends and relatives, that wouldn’t cause him some form of unease.”

“You mean, he’s only comfortable around his toadies because he secretly knows that everybody hates him and thinks he’s an utter twat? Good on him, I wouldn’t have thought he’d be clever enough to figure that out.”

He coughed again; Eglantine thought that this might be some form of chuckle for him. “I must say, having you around would be almost like having McGonagall back…and also maybe Severus Snape. I do concur with your opinion about Ms. Granger-Weasley, but—well, in truth, it was actually Hermione who pointed out that I’d probably not be keeping any professor for long, so I’ve decided to just continue teaching the classes myself until Finnegan gives me somebody. I don’t even care how stupid they turn out to be, I’m just tired of talking about protection charms and grading essays.”

“That’s exactly the wrong attitude. You should use your remaining months of freedom to be the biggest pain you can possibly be. Weren’t you Finnegan’s classmate, way back when? Tell your students all his most embarrassing secrets. Better yet, tell me. I’ll make them even more interesting.”

“I _was_ his classmate, which I believe is the only reason I’ll be allowed to keep my own job, Ms. Bertrand. We weren’t best friends, or anything, but we were both in Gryffindor house…funny how it’s all turned out, isn’t it?”

“Because he should’ve been in Slytherin? Slytherin’s too good for him—one of my oldest and most vexing friends was a Slytherin.”

Neville sighed. “Ms. Bertrand, in a few months’ time you’ll be unemployed—“

“Again? Oh, drat. I’m almost seventy, Longbottom. I’m past caring. I’m rich, retired, and want very little out of life, other than to annoy people younger than I am. Do give me that chance, if only for a couple months.”

Neville coughed. “All right, Ms. Bertrand. You’re hired. I’ll make the announcement and await the letters of complaint from the parents. And grandparents. And first, second, and third cousins, neighbors, pets…”

“Oh, come on. I didn’t make that much of a reputation for myself.”

“When I was hired, McGonagall used you as every single example of what not to do as a Professor.”

“Me? Binns was much worse. He was dead. And don’t forget Snape, leaving smudges on everyone’s paper so you couldn’t even see how many points he’d knocked off just because he didn’t like anybody. And _Trelawney_ , what a ditz. I was always rescuing her from bushes.”

“Every. Single. Example.”

“She might’ve diversified a bit, honestly.”

Eglantine settled into her chair, a mug of tea in her hand, the Beatles playing on the record player, and a new book of sheet music in her hands. She hummed along to it, trying to get a feel for the time signatures and the lyricism of the notes (if there was any to be found) when there was a knock at the door.

No one came knocking anymore.

She got her wand, telling herself that she’d lived a long and mostly interesting life, and that if she died now as a result of a stranger knocking at her door, that might not be the worst way to go. She opened the door.

“Allie? Is that really you?”

Her daughter was the last living person Eglantine had expected to see. She looked the same as she had ten years ago, nearly: her face was paler and more angular, more like her than like Sirius; and her hair was darker, more like his. Somehow, though they were _almost_ identical—same deep brown-black hair, same sharp eyes—Addie had always favored Sirius. It was the longing in her eyes, where Allie wanted to look forward; it was the desire to ruminate and process rather than distract herself that really made Adhara her father’s daughter. Allie ran from her problems, just like Eglantine did; though Sirius had fled home, it was a decision that was motivated by progress, not reaction.

“Yeah. It is.”

“I—er—come in! Do you—do you want some tea?”

“No.” The door shut behind her. “Why didn’t you ever try to talk to me, to make me come back?”

_Straight to the point, as well as resentful and woe-is-me, just like him._ “I _did_ , Aludra. I gave you your time, because certainly no one could have tried to make me do anything I didn’t want to do, so why would you be any different, I thought? And the time went on, and on, and I asked Addie what was going on with you, and she said you were still bothered, so I kept giving you time. Then I tried to write you a letter, and you returned it to me.”

“Oh. I suppose I did. But you’d waited too long.”

“Aludra, you were irate. You told me that I was a liar, that you hated me, that nothing I would ever do would change that. I thought you were being a bit overdramatic, if we’re being honest, but I also thought you’d get over it. You didn’t. I thought, well, this is the way life is. We can’t get on with everybody.”

“I’m your _daughter_.”

“And I’m your mother, aren’t I? And you’re here right now, aren’t you? So we can either have the same silly argument we had eleven years ago, or we can talk about something else and get to know each other all over again.”

_Typical Mum. Typical Bertrand—glide over the unpleasant and carry on._ Addie was like that, and—with the exception of earlier that day—so was Melusina. Allie almost reveled in the unpleasant, savored it like bitter wine one drank because it’d cost fifty pounds at Oddbins and she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to suck it down.

“Can you still—er—speak to the dead?”

“Yes. Of course I can.”

“Is it your career? Muggles love that sort of thing, I’m told. They all want to hear about how Great-Aunt Phyllis is doing in the great beyond.”

Allie sank into a chair, the same chair she’d always occupied as a girl; the Beatles were playing, as they usually had been; and she could smell Earl Grey. She felt like Odysseus at the end of the journey.

“No, it’s nothing to do with my career. I work with your cousin Mel, at the Ministry.”

“Oh,” said Eglantine, in a tone that said, _Mel will certainly be hearing about this later._ “And how is Mel? I hear she’s the head of the Department of Mysteries, now. Is that the department you’re in?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Eglantine said again. Allie thought that she didn’t have to read minds to know what her mother would associate that with.

“Earlier today, I went into that room. That room with the veil.” Allie let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “It’s the only reason I wanted to work there at all. My job is brain-meltingly boring. But I went in there while Mel was busy, and I sat by the archway and I started meditating.”

“And?”

“Mel interrupted me. But later, I heard him. He—he must’ve tried very hard to reach me.” _Especially given what Mel said_ , she thought. For all her years’ experience as a medium, there was a lot Allie didn’t know about death and spirits. She didn’t know why Sirius had been able to communicate with her, whether it was because of their blood relation or because his fall into the veil had been unintentional.

“What did he say?”

“He said your name.” Eglantine went white. “He said your name, and he talked to me a bit. I told him about Addie, and that we were his daughters, and he picked up right away on the fact that you’d named us after stars in that constellation.”

“He thought it was funny?”

“He did. And he said…he said he missed you.”

“Jesus.” Eglantine sank onto the sofa. “I thought—I never—I never admitted to myself that I missed him, Allie. I did, and I didn’t. Maybe a better choice of words would be that I never admitted how much, or how much I regretted…” Her hands shook. “No. Regret is not something I do. Forward, not backward. How do you like the Ministry, Allie?”

_Another classic Mum move. Change the subject if it bothers you, nevermind logic._

“Like I said, boring. And creepy. The Minister listens to us if we mention his name, d’you know that? If someone says his name within the Ministry walls, he can hear it—according to Mel. She should know, she’s probably the one who set the whole system up. Apparently, he got the idea from—well, you know.”

“I’ve been reading about him! He’s the absolute worst. He puts werewolves in _villages_.”

“That’s not all he does.”

“Ooh, tell me!” Eglantine looked like a fourteen-year-old girl trading gossipy secrets at a slumber party, and it had been years since anyone had spoken to Allie as if she were just an ordinary, gossipy, flighty little person, rather than a weirdo who talked to ghosts. “What else?”

She told her. She told her about the bans on reproduction, about the euthanasia, about everything but the Veil. Eglantine listened, eyes wide, nodding with fervent interest. Allie had never seen her mother like this.

“He’s got to be bloody well _stopped_ , hasn’t he?” she said at the end of it.

“How?” _If he doesn’t like you, he sticks you in Ghost Prison._ “Hadn’t everybody better just wait until the next Minister?”

“ _What_ next Minister? He’s exactly the sort of person who’d appoint himself Lifetime Grand Vizier or something.”

Allie felt the same stomach-curdling feeling she had had earlier. “Do you suppose he’s listening to us right now?”

“Oh, probably,” Eglantine said airily. “Your sister and I had a long conversation about him earlier—his ears must’ve been burning! I certainly hope that’s one of the side effects of his little jinx, anyway.”

“You’re not worried?”

“Darling, I’m old. At this point, I’d look at a sudden death as a sort of grand finale.”

“You’re not _that_ old. Not for a witch, anyway.”

“No, but I’m old enough for my own preferences.”

Allie nodded, understanding; she wasn’t yet thirty, but she sometimes felt the same way. She’d always had a heightened sense of time. “I want to talk to him again, but I don’t know how.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know _how_ , darling? It’s a natural talent you have, and a rare one at that—not from either side of the family, as far as I can recall. You can do anything you put your mind to.”

“No, I can’t. Not this time.”

“Why not? Is it—is it to do with how he died?”

Allie nodded. Her mother was waiting for further details, but she didn’t know how to say it. _Just blurt it out. It’s not going to hurt her any more or less now than it would’ve in 1996, or more or less than it would in the future._

“The veil he fell through…it doesn’t lead to—to the normal place that dead people go.”

“Where do they usually go? An afterlife?”

Allie had never tried to explain to her mother how she heard and saw the spirits. She had told Allie, and Mel, and certain people at school, trying to make them understand her and what she could do. Eglantine had never seemed as though she would want to know the ins and outs of such a mystery.

“They don’t always go somewhere. A lot of spirits leave something behind, and it’s sort of…you know how when you stare at something long enough, it leaves an imprint? It’s like that. I think they _do_ go somewhere, but they leave behind part of themselves, too. Sometimes I get the real thing—whether the spirit hasn’t moved on, or whether I actually succeed in breaking into the afterlife, I don’t know. More often, what I see is anywhere between Mrs. Muir’s ghost and the whisper of a person that contains the last meal they had and the last thing they thought of before they died.”

“But your father?”

“I heard him, at a distance. I didn’t see him. It was far from normal. I asked Mel…I asked her what the veil was for.”

Eglantine nodded. “It’s an execution chamber, isn’t it? Like a mousetrap for people’s souls?”

Allie flinched, not knowing why—was she surprised that her mother should have figured it out, or that she had said it so nonchalantly, as if she’d known for years?

“I heard something of it in Amos’s head,” she said, picking at a lint ball that had formed on the arm of the sofa. “I had never—I never trespassed like that with my family, apart from two specific times: the night your father got arrested, and the day after he died.” She looked up at Allie, her jaw set and her eyes shining. Allie had never thought of her mother as intimidating: she was flighty, frivolous, and annoyingly matter-of-fact in a way that Allie had always known wasn’t natural, but _on purpose_ , because she couldn’t be bothered with her own emotions. Eglantine, she thought, could have terrified Voldemort himself if she’d put her mind to it, precisely because she was the opposite of anything that that sort of person could ever understand. Not because she was pure good, but because she was pure emotion underneath everything, all the messy self-contradictory nonsense that people like Voldemort had tried--ultimately unsuccessfully--to claim they had nothing to do with. “I had been told about the veil,” Eglantine continued, “but not what it was. When the night was over, I went to my sister’s and—and held him there. They couldn’t stop me. They had no chance. I forced your uncle to show me what went on in that room. I saw trials, I saw him shoving someone back through the veil. I left my sister’s and didn’t speak to her again. Not ever.” A muscle twitched in her neck. “That is, I fear, one of the few things I do regret.”

“I could speak to her.”

Eglantine shook her head. “No. I told you when you were young, no family members. I—I don’t mind about your father. What’s done is done. But no one else. Especially not Camilla. Talk to Aunt Alya if you must talk to a relative. You’d think she’s a trip.”

“Are you afraid of what Aunt Camilla would say about you?”

“Of course I bloody am!” She blinked back a tear. “Do you know how difficult it is for a witch to kill herself? The natural instinct of the body always takes over, stops the person from drowning, stops the bullet from making contact. Not Camilla. She must’ve—“ Eglantine shook her head. “Allie, talk about something else. Anything else. I’m used to the idea by now that your father’s gone, because I’ve had to get used to it twice. I’ll never be used to Cam being gone.”


End file.
